Macy clutched his chest. ‘No, Daddy, we’re not. We can’t be! You always get us out of things like this. You can do it again!’

Eddie managed a smile. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, love. Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.’ He looked around – and saw nothing. ‘Okay . . . er . . .’

Chapter 34

34

Gadreel almost laughed as the colossal tower fell. The beasts had built their weapon without knowing how to control it, blinded by their innate lust for destruction and violence . . . and now it had been turned against them.

Its first test was a success – but, he saw as the dust cleared, not a total one. The building had not been obliterated, instead caught by another tower behind it. An unexpected emotion at the sight: annoyance. He wanted to send a clear message, that the humans could not stand against the Nephilim, but the structure’s partial survival seemed almost an insulting rebuke.

Sidona joined him at the unbroken window, Zan hanging back in shock. His wife appeared drained by her actions, but also satisfied by the devastation. ‘We did it!’ she exulted. ‘We will make these animals pay for killing Turel.’ She glanced across the room. Their son’s body had been covered, but remained where he had fallen.

‘We will. But you must finish what you started. We must make them fear us again.’

‘And they shall.’ She turned back towards the mausoleum—

‘My lord!’ shouted a warrior. ‘There is something in the sky, coming towards us!’

Gadreel and Sidona scanned the vista. It took them a moment to spot a tiny dark, angular shape, high up. ‘Another of their flying machines,’ growled the Nephilim leader.

‘There are two of them!’ Sidona warned. A second trailed the first. ‘What shall we do?’

He frowned, thinking. The People of the Tree had always known earth energy could be used to levitate objects, but only Nephilim ingenuity had applied that knowledge to a weapon; as a result, it had never been imagined that the fortress’s lightning spears would be fired at anything other than ground targets. The smashed window and damaged hull proved that a costly oversight. And the approaching machines were flying far higher and faster than the ungainly, blade-spinning aircraft. The gunners would not be able to hit them . . .

‘When you link with the energy flow through the machine,’ he said as an idea formed, ‘can you still sense the world around you?’

‘Yes,’ Sidona replied. ‘Everything that is physical affects the flow, alive or not. I can feel it.’

‘Even in the air?’

‘Yes—’ She stopped as she understood his meaning. ‘I can bring them down,’ she said, awed at the realisation that her powers no longer had limits. ‘I can destroy them!’

‘Go,’ Gadreel ordered. She ran for the mausoleum as he watched the two aircraft close in.